Iron Ring

The Iron Ring was the nickname given to Austro-Hungarian premier Eduard Taaffe's cabinet (1879-1883), which consisted of conservative leaders who opposed German dominance in the Austrian part of the empire in favor of restoring Bohemian autonomy. The "Old Czech" nobility favored an alliance with the Germanized Bohemian nobility to create a Bohemian kingdom (including Moravia and Silesia) as a third kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy, and they nearly reinstated the kingdom with the 1871 "Fundamental Article". However, German and Hungarian liberals blocked the passage of the article, and Bohemia's autonomy would not be achieved. The Iron Ring took power from the liberals in 1879 after Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria was frustrated by the liberals' opposition to his annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Czech became an official language in 1880, while Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague was reformed to teach in both German and Czech. However, the Czech commercial and industrial bourgeoisie opposed the Iron Ring's reforms in favor of controlling local education and administration, and the radical "Young Czechs" took power in 1891.